Screening a traditional telephony call made by a calling party to a called party includes receiving, over a telephone network, the traditional telephony call from the calling party at a messaging service platform, recording an audio message from the calling party as audio data, and transmitting the audio data from the messaging service platform to a computer of the called party while the calling party is leaving the audio message. Before the calling party finishes leaving the audio message, the called party perceives the transmitted audio data and reacts to the traditional telephony call in response to the audio message.